


Pakicetus

by inar68



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pokemon, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Surprisingly wholesome, Symbolism, pets sailing the ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29297424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inar68/pseuds/inar68
Summary: All life started in the ocean. Some of it stayed. But a lot of it left and populated land, and only a very tiny minority of those ones ever went back.
Relationships: Aogiri | Archie/Matsubusa | Maxie
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	Pakicetus

Whales started out as small, deerlike creatures that lived primarily on land. They are now some of the most recognizably oceanic animals, once assumed to be fish rather than the world's largest mammals.

Octopuses have three hearts. One for the tentacles, one for the gills, and one _just for the brain._

These aren't just random fun facts, though he _does_ think they're neat. They're things that Archie is using as symbolic rationalizations for anything but marine biology at the moment.

Namely; though very uncommon, it is possible for land animals to readapt to a fully aquatic lifestyle. That, and it's okay to think with your heart sometimes. And those two statements are indeed correlated.

Whether they're actually solid reasoning whatsoever or distraction from the fact they aren't, he knows as well as anyone it's the latter. But hell, people can dream, and he's had impossible dreams before. They didn't go well, not even slightly, but it might be different this time.

Besides, he's really good at talking so much people will just assume he has any idea what he's talking about. So is the strange little deer thing to his overly emotional octopus. They've always had that _one thing_ in common. There might be more. There's a chance there is. He's flat out lying to himself as easily as he breathes but who cares?

"The long lost childhood friends trope has no business being real," he mutters to himself. Of all things to reunite him with Maxie, of course it had been science. Two completely different kinds of science, but it's still science. He's never going to understand why geologists are that captivated by the parts of earth that _aren't_ alive of all things, and Maxie is never going to understand how enough people have so little of a _will_ to live that marine biology even managed to become a thing to study. That's how they always were on some level. _Dirt boring, ocean scary, no you._ Despite having degrees and lives in the real world now, they never grew out of being that childish. Maxie just likes to think he did. Archie on the other hand embraces it.

In any case, he's tired of dancing around him like this. Maxie is appropriately the closest thing to an organic volcano ever documented, and while Archie practically lives to make a complete eruption occur at least once a day… he doesn't think he could handle it happening over something serious. So he's just kept his feelings bottled up for years now, the whole time they were in college together and the additional three years since he'd graduated (five for Maxie, and two years in age has always been and is to this day Archie's excuse to call him a grouchy old man).

But volcanoes aren't the only natural phenomenon that can cause terrifying amounts of damage. Rising sea levels are just a more gradual process and as a result pretty damn predictable.

"Ahab, c'mere boy!" Archie whistles down the hallway, and galloping along on all _three_ legs comes the huge mess of a golden retriever. Yes, it was a dick move to name him that, but he just couldn't help it. "Wanna go see Sid?" The mention of the black and white border collie, whose full name is _Obsidian_ not that anyone actually calls him that, instantly gets a tail wag. "Well let's go!"

The 'we only hang out so much because our dogs are friends' trope has no business being real either, but that one is at least an _intentional_ incorporation on Archie's part, and he's been using it since they both got puppies. Puppies that are both very much grown adult dogs by now. It's a more run of the mill change of pace to aquariums on every available surface and a camel. Yes, a fucking _camel_. Why, or _how_ , Archie still doesn't know, but the second he had enough outdoor space Maxie got an entire camel and he's absolutely in love with the damn thing. But then again, so are both of their dogs. It's not Sandstone's fault she's a camel.

\--

Archie stares out at the field, having elected to just sit in the grass despite being rather adamantly offered a folding chair. Maxie has one anyway, and has made very clear it is his and if Archie wants one after all later then too bad. The dogs are just running circles around Sandstone as always. Sid has herding instincts and Ahab just copies him the best he can. Sandstone doesn't care enough to budge today. "She seriously doesn't give a shit anymore."

Maxie smiles a rare genuine smile. _At his camel and not Archie, unfortunately…_ "She never did, really. But I think they just especially wore her out today."

"So, in your recollection, there are times when she _doesn't_ just… exist?"

"She's a _camel_ , Archie."

"Nobody's perfect."

Maxie rolls his eyes at the dumb retort but doesn't directly reply to it. He knows by now that only encourages him. "What do you expect her to do, exactly?"

"I've wanted to ask you the same thing ever since you told me you were getting a camel."

"What do your fish do?"

That makes Archie pause for a moment. "I mean. I like fish? I didn't think that was at any point a mystery. Pretty much most of my career field has something or other to do with fish somewhere along the line."

"There's your answer. I just like camels."

"Since when?" Archie feels a little guilty realizing that he somehow never knew what animals Maxie liked, not even when they were kids. Despite it being the animals in the ocean as much as the ocean itself that drove Archie's fascination since then, Maxie and things with currently active cells were never associated closely enough in his mind for him to ask.

"I've always liked camels. If I had to pick a favorite animal, it's probably camels."

"I'm… assuming you already know mine."

"Orca hasn't sounded like a real word to me since I was eight years old."

Archie snorts, glad that Maxie doesn't seem shocked by the fact he doesn't know the same about him. "Yeah. You just never talked about camels as much as I talked about orcas."

"That's because no one talks about _anything_ that much. It's humanly impossible." Maxie is smiling again. Still not at Archie, just at his own comebacks, but that's at least closer. "I'm not _obsessed_ with them, mind you. Most people's favorite animal isn't half their personality, that's a you thing."

"Eh. I'd say _I'm_ more like a shark than anything, personally." Archie smirks as he decides to just go along with the banter, as long as it's an excuse to have a somewhat normal conversation between the two of them.

"That's not what I meant, and you know it." Maxie kicks back in his chair. "I'm curious, though, since you're implying there's some difference between a favorite animal and a _you_ animal. What animal is me?"

Suddenly, this is the best opportunity Archie's ever going to get, and it's so unexpected he doesn't have time to think it through before he blurts it out. "Pakicetus."

"... I should've known not to ask you. What's its common name?"

"It doesn't have one. That genus has been extinct for at least 41 million years." Now that he's started, though, he's seeing it through. "It was essentially a carnivorous deer with a really weird looking head."

There's a very long pause. "I'm already extremely disturbed yet also morbidly intrigued."

"Y'know how sometimes things go extinct, but stay around in modern forms you wouldn't think of as the same thing unless you knew? Like how birds are the only surviving dinosaurs?"

"Excuse me, they're _what_?"

"I guess you didn't, then. Well, that's a thing, yeah. Pakicetus is also one of those things. The old version of an animal that kept existing but changed beyond recognition."

"Please for the love of all that is holy say this is a joke. I'm never going to sleep again if there are still deformed-headed carnivorous deer."

"Well, they're already somewhere _you'd_ never have to worry about them." Archie gulps. "Pakicetus was uh… a _whale_."

There's another long pause. _Painfully_ long. "Why does this seem so… _unironically very serious_ to you right now? I can't remember the last time I saw you look nervous. This is just you being stupid and trying to annoy me, right? Why the convincing theatrics?"

"Because… every animal that exists came from the ocean at one point or another. Some of them just stayed there, but a lot eventually adapted to live on land. But very few of them ever readapted to _return_."

Maxie looks agitated. "I am still not following what this means to you, but I have a feeling it's something. And if it isn't serious it also isn't funny. You're being weird. Even for you."

"It's comparatively extremely rare for something that left the ocean to go backwards. It's far more likely in the grand scheme of things more might eventually adapt to land." Archie sighs. "But I sure don't plan on going anywhere, so I just have to hope for that teeny tiny chance you'll join me again at some point. I miss you."

"I…" Maxie stammers. "I'm right here. What does any of this mean?"

"That the things we chose to do with our lives are the only thing that ever drove us apart for a long period of time. Not like me just getting on your nerves for fun… like having no time for each other and getting frustrated with each other for not seeing the appeal of our thing to the point we've had actual real falling outs over it. And I… feel like I've just been waiting for that to stop mattering even though it matters way too fucking much to us."

"... We always get past those fights, though. And we're spending time together right now."

"I want to stop using our dogs as an excuse to see you."

"Then don't? We're adults, Archie. And we've known each other since we were anything but. Just make plans. It really isn't that hard." Maxie has turned awkwardly to look directly down at Archie in the grass from the folding chair. 

"It is hard. I don't want you to start reading into it and feeling weird or something."

Maxie audibly groans and rolls his eyes. "For fuck's sake. Forget being adults, you still feel the need to 'no homo' me."

"Actually, Max? I _don't_. And that's the problem. Not because you're a man and I'd give half a shit what anyone had to say about it or that I was under any impression I was totally straight in the first place, but because you're my best friend and I'd rather have that indefinitely than potentially ruin things forever like this."

This is, by far, the longest silence. Archie can hear his racing heartbeat in his ears. And he feels that heart _shatter_ when Maxie stands up from his chair without a word, so devastatingly that he doesn't think before he stands to follow him. 

Or so he thinks he'll have to.

Maxie only draws closer, facing Archie directly and reminding him just how insignificant their _height_ difference actually is. He's practically on eye level. 

"Maxie… I'm sorry. Pretend I never said anyth-"

" _No_." The fire in his tone almost makes Archie physically recoil, and he's expecting the worst when Maxie grabs him by the shirt… but it isn't at all what he expected.

He'd just been shut up with a rough kiss.

The simulation must've stopped. Suddenly they're in the good timeline where more than 1% of the ocean is discovered but there's also far more of it to discover now and human society is collapsing at the seams and Archie never ran his mouth about this so naturally this must be somebody far less important to him smashing their lips against his until he can't breathe.

When he finally pulls away to do so, sure enough it's still Maxie.

"I… Max… ?"

"You, me. Yes Archie, very good job." Maxie casually pushes his glasses up and looks off to the side as though his face isn't currently matching his hair.

"Can it be?"

"Can what be what?"

"You and me… uh. We?"

"I would've hoped and _expected_ you'd be the less awkward of the two of us in this department. Lord fucking help us." He's smiling at him though. _Finally_. "I wouldn't have responded like that if the answer was no."

He's at a loss for words, so he settles for a needlessly tight bear hug which is feebly returned.

A few moments that feel like forever pass like that before their dogs leave Sandstone alone to investigate the commotion and Maxie's muffled voice protests, "I can't breathe!"

Archie releases him with a laugh. "You'll evolve a solution to that as you adapt. There's still no mammals with gills."

**Author's Note:**

> subtle cute thing i just wanna point out: i chose those specific dog breeds bc golden retrievers like water and border collies are herders which i associate with like... human development?? idk man i dont actually like dogs but i did my best
> 
> and a legal notice that by giving positive feedback you sign my petition for more wholesome hardenshipping bc silence wench i do not wish to be horny anymore i just want to be happy


End file.
